


The Scenario and the Solution

by JessaLRynn



Series: Recipes for Disaster [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alien Sex, Aliens Made Them Do It, F/M, Fuck Or Die, Gen, Humor, I'm Going to Hell, Ruining Your Trope, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 12:32:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13951614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: It's a classic: mix one batch of alien scientists, one prison cell with no amenities, one pink-and-yellow human companion, and one angry Time Lord with big ears and a leather jacket. Instant explosion: just add cliche.





	1. The Scenario

**Author's Note:**

> First, gather your ingredients...

  
  
The Doctor stared at the blobby yellow aliens defiantly. Rose had no idea what was going on, as she could only understand his side of the conversation. Whatever language the blobby things - she couldn't even pronounce the name for them - were speaking, it wasn't something that would make sense to her, even translated, apparently. Or, for some other reason, the Doctor had asked the TARDIS not to translate. She didn't know, couldn't guess, but she was nervous, because the only other time since she'd met him that she'd not understood was with that Nestene thing and the Autons and that had been bad.  
  
"No! Absolutely not!" the Doctor proclaimed fiercely. His blue eyes were blazing with powerful fury and he held her hand tighter, almost so tightly it hurt. She returned the strong grip, determined that she would do whatever she had to do to get them out of this predicament. Whatever the hell it was.  
  
The biggest, blobbiest alien said something squishy and weird and the Doctor made a face. "Yes, I admit that," he said. "But no."  
  
Whatever it said next drained his face of color. "Forget it," he responded, coldly.  
  
The aliens came toward them with the electric sticks they'd used to herd them this far, and the Doctor backed away, tucking Rose behind him as he moved.  
  
The blobby alien said something else, a gurgling, squashy, wet sounding command. The Doctor nodded. "Then lock us up," he said. "But it won't change my decision and when we escape, I'm coming after you."  
  
Rose wondered if the aliens had any idea what they'd just summoned down on themselves as she and the Doctor were prodded and guided off toward the customary dungeon accommodations.  
  


*?*

"So?" Rose asked him. "What are they? Dictators, terrorists, power mad conspirators, what?"

The Doctor slumped on his bench across the cell from her and glowered at the guard alien. "No, they're scientists," he said, grimly.

"Oh," she said, admittedly surprised. "So they want to dissect us or something?"

"No," he answered. Nothing else. God, sometimes it was easier to get the truth off the Council than to get a word off the Doctor. Rose leaned back against the wall, watching the Time Lord fidget. He was looking for an opportunity to use his screwdriver, she knew that, and he didn't want it taken away before he got round to it.

"What do they want?" she asked, coming up to lean over him, deliberately fitting into his personal space so she could block the guard's view.

He grinned at her and pulled out the screwdriver, then started talking loudly. "Well, you know, the usual threats, of course. Get threatened a lot, me, so I'm used to it." He used the screwdriver while he was talking, scanning around quickly and reading God alone knew what. Whatever it was it made his face fall. He leaned back a bit so she turned and he scanned the bars. "You know, the 'Do what we want, or die,' that sort of thing."

"Yeah, we do get that a lot," she agreed, loudly. "Hardly seems very original."

"Well, yeah, this one's a bit cliche," he agreed. He shook his head and stuffed the screwdriver in his pocket.

She sighed and went to sit back down on her side of the cell. So much for an easy escape.

When they changed guards, there was a bit of confusion. During that, he quietly explained that the bars were made of a kind of metal stone that was impervious to the sonic, due to the acidic nature of the aliens' skin. It also explained why he wouldn't let them touch her. He could take it, a little bit, but she would be horribly burned by even the lightest touch of their hands.

*?*

Hours passed. "Gotta tell you, Doctor, you sure do pick the best holidays."

He grunted and stretched out on his bench, looking weary and a bit resigned.

More hours passed and the aliens came back and threatened the Doctor some more. He ignored them for the most part, so she did her best to ignore them as well. However, at one point in the conversation, the alien sounded like it was cajoling rather than threatening and the Doctor's ears turned pink. He barked a fierce, angry retort in some language that wouldn't translate - probably because of rudeness, this time - and the alien went brighter yellow and squished off in high dudgeon. Rose giggled and settled back on her bench, thinking of having a nap.

She was woken from her sleep by another half-sided conversation. The alien had what looked like a medical kit with it this time. The Doctor was looming against the bars, looking a lot like he was going to triplicate the flammability of something with his furious eyes alone. The alien was gesturing at her and the Doctor said nothing but, "Don't even think about it."

The alien stalked off again, and Rose thought it was starting to look a little frustrated. "What do they want?" she asked blearily.

"Never mind," said the Doctor, and came over to sit beside her, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder.

She smiled up at him, then laid her head down in his lap. He stared down at her in bewilderment. "Thanks," she said, and turned a little, trying to get comfortable. Hard muscle made a better pillow than hard bench, but he would keep twitching, pretty much every time she breathed. "Hold still," she complained, putting her hand on his thigh next to her face and trying to soothe him.

He lowered a hand to her waist, as if he was afraid she'd explode on contact. She sighed contentedly and closed her eyes.

She woke a few more times, once to the sensation of his fingers threading comfortingly through her hair, once when he shrugged out of his jacket to drape it over her shoulders and once because the Time Lord she was using as a pillow was snoring rather impressively. All three times she was eased back into sleep by the steady presence of the Doctor, the knowledge that he could solve all of this and get them back to the TARDIS and back to the stars where they belonged.

*?*

"Don't talk," the Doctor ordered the alien who had arrived first thing the next morning. "You'll wake her." The alien muttered something at him and burbled off.

Rose smiled. He was so protective of her. She turned over, having momentarily forgotten where she was lying. His hands snagged her before she fell, one catching her arm in a strong grip, the other firmly planted on her bottom. She knew he was going to kill her for that and her eyes flew open.

She breathed an explosive breath of relief at having been caught. He twitched again. Her eyes widened and she forced them to concentrate on his belt buckle and nothing else in front of her face. Might kill her for this, too, she realized. She dared to peek up at him, taking in the lovely view of his jumper clad torso on her way up. His eyes were dark blue and the expression in them stopped her breath.

Before she could give it a name, he shifted his hold on her and eased her into a sitting position. "You all right?" he murmured. His voice sounded strange.

"Yeah," she agreed. "Sorry 'bout that."

"No worries," he pronounced and bounded to his feet. He muttered a small complaint, probably his back was hurting him from the position he slept in, and then reached over and snagged his leather jacket back from her. He held it in front of him and rifled through the pockets until he produced a single banana. "Breakfast, I'm afraid," he said ruefully.

She gaped at him. She was starving, hadn't eaten since breakfast yesterday. Her stomach grumbled a small protest.

The Doctor smiled at her apologetically and handed her the banana. "You have it, I'm fine," he said.

She snorted. She'd seen him eat. Nevertheless, she peeled it and broke it in half. He shrugged and took the half she offered, stuffing it in his mouth in maybe two bites and pacing the cage, looking for all the world like a panther in a zoo.

Since it was all she had to eat, she leaned back against the bars and savored it. Bananas were pretty good, after all, and she was hungry enough that she didn't care that it was a bit sticky on her fingers as she nibbled at it.

She looked up to admire the Doctor pacing again, but he wasn't. He was leaning against the bars opposite her, and his eyes were carefully watching the aliens. His hand was clenched into a fist, the other stuffed into his pocket. He looked like he was about to chuck the sonic screwdriver at the aliens rather than try to use it to escape. His eyes, as well as she could see them, were blazing.

She turned her attention back to her meal and he made a small noise of exasperation. Those aliens had better let them out or he was gonna blow this place up.

She started sucking at her fingers to get the sticky bits of banana off and the Doctor snapped, "Don't do that," at her. She looked up at him, startled. Hadn't even realized he was paying any attention to her.

"It isn't sanitary," he said quickly, and brought over a clean handkerchief from somewhere.

"Is there any water?" she asked, her mouth suddenly dry.

He shook his head, his eyes apologetic as he knelt next to her and handed her the handkerchief. He was close enough, she could just... He stood back up and walked across the room. When he turned away, she sighed.

He was being so nice to her, and she really needed to get over the mad ideas in her head, the ones that often kept her up nights in the TARDIS. Whatever he felt for her, it was completely platonic. She'd realized that a few weeks back, after Downing Street. With the things he'd said, and the way he'd said them, she'd been convinced he would take her back to the TARDIS and shag her rotten, but he didn't. She just needed to give it up and get over it.

She leaned back against the bars and silently wished for water and other impossible things.

*?*

The hours crept by. Some time during hour two, the Doctor pulled a Duncan Imperial out of a pocket and began doing tricks with it. She watched him in fascination, guessing after he pulled one particularly impossible variation that there was something funny about that yo yo - or possibly the Time Lord playing with it.

When he got bored with it, he offered it to her, but she waved him off apologetically. She got the string tangled just playing with the things. He rifled through his pockets and produced a Rubik's cube. She grinned at it and set to playing with it, thoroughly scrambling it after only a few minutes. Then, she couldn't get it back to save her soul. The Doctor came and sat beside her, taking it from her hands. A few deft twists and he had it back to solids.

"How'd you do that?" she asked.

"Genius," he replied smugly.

"Then get us out of this cell," she demanded.

"Working on it," he assured her, and pocketed the Rubik's cube.

She stuffed her hand in after it, but it had gone into the God-knows-where space that was the bottom of his pockets. "What else you got in there?" she asked.

"Depends on which pocket," he said. She tugged playfully on the jeans pocket nearest her, and he pulled out the screwdriver again. "That's it." He put up a hand to show it was otherwise empty.

She sighed and, bored out of her mind, laid back down on the bench, wishing for water and maybe some nice, hot chips.

Then the aliens turned back up, with the medical kit again. The Doctor was apparently being offered the medical services this time. He shouted them down, chased them off, and then walked to the back of the cell and proceeded to kick the wall.

Rose scrambled from the bench and went up beside him, putting a soothing hand on his arm. He turned to look at her and she saw something beyond what she had ever seen before. His eyes were wild and full of star-fire, burning, blazing, very nearly out of control. He had never, ever looked quite so alien, not even when he stood there and coldly pronounced judgement on Cassandra and watched her die, not even when he'd tried to blow up that Dalek. Suddenly, she understood something she hadn't really understood before. His feelings weren't unlike human feelings, but they were so much bigger than human feelings. His joy was like sunrise, like the first dawn of the first day, and his rage was like that fire storm across the sky, like the flash frozen seas of ice on Woman Wept.

She shivered and, feeling like she was taking her life in her own hands, leaned in closer to him. She could watch him like that for the rest of her life, just let that raging storm of his emotions burn around her and through her, consuming the rest of her days with an endless dance through the thunder and the lightning that were his eyes and his heart beats and his life. She moved ever closer, unable to resist, drawn in, feeling like she belonged there, in his wonder and his orbit, inside him, within him.

He blinked, briefly, and then the completely alien look was gone from his eyes and he leaned against her. "You shouldn't have had to see that," he said, the closest thing to an apology she had ever heard from him.

"Don't," she said, and he looked completely startled while she shrugged. "What's wrong?" she said, instead of going into her feelings about what he had revealed to her.

"This is completely beneath your dignity," he said. "Never mind mine."

"Oh, yeah, because your Time Lord dignity is so much more important than my stupid ape dignity," she said, half teasing and half insulted.

"Well, yeah. Enormous dignity, most Time Lords. Coulda bruised and banged it up turning corners, some of them."

She smiled. This was the most he'd ever said about his people before. She could keep teasing him, or arguing with him, whichever, but it was risky territory and a subject she knew it was necessary to avoid at all costs. "You never did say what they want," she said, instead.

He still clammed up and fell silent.

*?*

The aliens came by two more times and the Doctor and Rose did their best to ignore them. They played a few hands of poker on the floor, but it wasn't the best game to play with two people and no chips. The Doctor rattled on about the origin of playing cards and, when she got bored with that, taught her a very complex solitaire.

Rose sat quietly in between his fits of trying to entertain her. When they got out of here, she was going to drink the TARDIS dry. She was reasonably certain that would take a while, but at the moment she was willing to give it a go. Her lips were dry and feeling chapped, her mouth was dry and feeling parched, and her stomach was rumbling periodically. She was beginning to think that maybe she could eat a whole steak, too, one of those large ones the Doctor liked to go with his chips in restaurants.

Mind, if she didn't get to go to the loo, soon, it wasn't going to matter, because she was going to die of embarrassment and wouldn't be around when there were steaks and chips and water a plenty.

The aliens came by one more time after Rose had pretty much had it. She was sweating and miserable and felt disgusting and hungry and quite a lot like she was starving of thirst. Nevertheless, she was also certain her eyeballs were floating and she hardly dared move from the pressure on her bladder. If she at least knew what was going on, she could endure anything, she was sure, but this was beyond any sort of explanation, and she was fed up.

The Doctor, looking rumpled and furious and every bit as miserable as she felt, still seemed to have it in him to pick yet another fight with them. She listened to the one-sided conversation as he threatened and complained about their conditions and spat words like "Shadow Proclamation" and "sentient experimental subjects". When the aliens decided they'd had enough Time Lord raging, they zapped him a few good times through the bars with their electric sticks and then squashed away, looking menacing this time.

She knelt carefully next to where he had crumpled on the floor, scared to death that they'd hurt him. She didn't have any way to help him, here, and if he was injured, she wouldn't understand what the aliens were saying, and couldn't get them out of this.

He groaned miserably, so she eased his head into her lap and soothed him with a hand stroking his dark, short-cropped hair. He tilted his face into her hand, eyes scrunched closed, looking like he was in an awful lot of pain. "Doctor," she whispered. She wasn't calling him, really, just talking. "It's ok, Doctor. You'll be all right, soon." She shushed him softly when he jerked his head. "My Doctor. We're safe, we'll be fine. Hush now, just relax."

He moaned softly, stopped fidgeting, and finally stilled. "That's nice, Rose," he murmured after a moment.

"Are you awake then?" she asked quietly.

"Obviously not," he said.

She had no idea what to make of that. "Don't worry, Doctor. You'll get better soon and get us out of here, I know you will."

His eyes snapped open, meeting hers with an expression that looked like considerable shock. "Where am I?" he demanded.

"Lying on the floor," she answered.

"Right," he said and, taking in her angle, realized where his head had to be. He bounded again to his feet, took a single, ginger step, only to crumple up again, hissing in pain.

Rose knee walked over next to him. "Don't move," she ordered. "You'll hurt yourself."

"I'll be fine," he grated out through clenched teeth.

"Stop it," she snapped as he tried to get away from her. "Lie down, lie still, let me help you."

"No," he protested.

That did it. She exploded. "What the hell is going on here, Doctor? 'Cuz, I've got to tell you, I've had enough."

He stared at her, blinked, said nothing. His mouth had compressed to a hard line and she was beginning to think he would never speak again. That was pretty unlikely, but it didn't look that way at the moment.

"Fine, you won't tell me, I'll just sit here. If I make a puddle on this floor, you're not allowed to say anything ever about it and if the dehydration gets me before the embarrassment does, you've got to go tell my mum. I'm hungry and I'm filthy and I'd give just about anything for water right now, and I'm not an oh, so impressive Time Lord, so I can't take it. No superior biology or whatever the hell it is you got, all right? So you'd best just tell me what the hell they want so I can give it to them and get us the hell out of here."

He blinked at her in astonishment and watched her right hand, as she brought it up to rub her face, in something that looked very much like horror. Maybe he was wondering if she hit as hard as her mum. Well, if he didn't tell her, he was going to find out.

"I'm waiting," she growled.

He sighed. "Theywanttoseeourreproductivepractices."

"Sorry? Can you do that in English? I don't speak 'scared whinging'."

"Shut it," he grumbled, and took a deep breath. "They want to see how Time Lords procreate."

She stared at him. He glowered back at her. She started to laugh. He gave an angry chuff and jerked himself up, using the bars as hand holds. She tried to climb to her feet, couldn't quite manage it, had to stop laughing before she really did make that puddle on the floor. She leaned on her hands and knees and tried to breathe, tried to stop, but one quick glance at his stormy, furious gaze set her off worse than before.

He leaned over, his beautiful, daft grin now trying its damnedest to fight its way onto his face, and very gently lifted her to her feet, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She was shaking hard from trying not to laugh, and she leaned in to him, listening to his chest rumble with that chuckle that had finally escaped him. "This is ridiculous," he commented.

"Damn right," she agreed, and breathed deeply, inhaling the scents of leather and him and loving every minute of it. He guided her back to her bench and sat with her, his arm still wrapped comfortingly around her shoulder. She just leaned into him and wondered why he had to make such a production of everything.

"So, it's pretty much shag or die," she said.

"Yup," he agreed after a moment. "Told you it was a cliche: exactly the sort of things you daft apes come up with in your aliens in space shows on tele."

She thought about it, head in her hands, fighting a blush. OK, yeah, so she watched Star Trek, and knew exactly what he was talking about. Stubborn alien with interesting ears.

She started giggling again, just thinking about it. Poor Doctor, trapped with a whole bunch of alien scientists who wanted a demonstration of his reproductive methods. Like it was something they'd never...

She felt like one of those cartoon characters, like a blindingly bright light bulb had just come on over her head.

"What?" the Doctor said.

Rose smirked at him.

"What?" he repeated, sounding a bit nervous now. "C'mon, Rose, I know that look. What're you thinking?"

She leaned in very close to the nearest interesting ear and, in a halting whisper, told him exactly what she was thinking. He gaped at her, his eyes wide and startled and slightly confused. "Really?" he asked.

She nodded, chewing nervously at her bottom lip.

He grinned then, and cupped her face in his hand. "Fantastic!" he announced.

Rose nodded again, and sighed as he pulled away and bounded to his feet. "Just... just gimme a mo," he said. "I think... yeah, fantastic."


	2. The Scenario and the Solution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...bake until tender. And explosive.

The aliens prodded them to a different room, a proper room, with an attached loo. Rose was so relieved to see that that she darted quite willingly into the new prison cell, pushed past the Doctor, into the loo, and shut the door firmly behind her.  
  
Inside, she took care of the most pressing problem, washed her hands carefully, and then tried her level damnedest to drain the faucet dry. Then she scrubbed her face and opened the door to let the Doctor in. He smiled at her, cupped her cheek again, and shooed her back toward the bed, smirking a bit.  
  
She put a hand over her mouth and, since she didn't feel like she would explode any more, she started laughing again. It was stress, she knew that, and the stunt they were about to pull.  
  
It wasn't like she would mind...  
  
She chortled and rolled across the bed and generally lost herself to hilarity. Poor Doctor. His pride was such that he wouldn't allow himself - or her - to be compelled into anything, and even the suggestion of it bruised his dignity. She strongly considered how much she could get out of wholly faked outrage at the implication that he would choose dying over shagging her. Still, to do that, she'd have to pretend like she didn't understand his motives, and if she understood anything about him, it was that he would always choose free will.  
  
Caught up in musing and occasional fits of giggling, she was completely oblivious to the Doctor's return. When he dropped his long, lanky form onto the bed beside her, with a rather enthusiastic bounce, she might add, she was quite startled.  
  
"'Lo," he said, peering down at her with intriguingly dark blue eyes.  
  
"Hi," she whispered, then bit back another snicker.  
  
He chuckled ruefully. "Clever, clever girl," he said softly. "C'mere."  
  
She smiled and inched up until she was lying beside him.  
  
"Cameras rolling and all that nuisance, I'm sure," he complained cheerfully. "Sure you're up for this?"  
  
She laughed gleefully and nudged him in the ribs. "If you are," she said, the double entendre of that obvious to a human, anyway.  
  
And to him, apparently. He rolled his eyes. "Behave," he muttered.  
  
She poked her tongue out through her grin, then shook her head. "I am behaving," she teased.  
  
He looked at her, just looked at her, his eyes dark and strange again, and she felt her breath catch in her throat. Did he have any idea, could he even imagine, did he know? Sometimes, the way he looked at her - his body language must be different from a human's because sometimes those deep, penetrating expressions of his made her want um... well... Her face went up in flames, just at the thought.  
  
He blinked, then the broad grin spread across his face. "Right, then," he muttered. "Time Lord procreative practices. Haven't got any knitting needles."  
  
She snorted, wishing her face would hurry up and cool off. "What're knitting needle to the price of rice?" she asked.  
  
"Old joke," he said. "You'd have to be there." Sighing, he leaned over. "This is insane," he whispered.  
  
"You're telling me," she whispered with rolled eyes.  
  
"Trust you to solve one cliche with another one," he complained quietly.  
  
"D'you think they won't buy it?" She chewed at her lip, worried that maybe she'd come up with the wrong idea.  
  
"Well, you've definitely got the point that if they've never seen it before, they can't argue about what it's supposed to look like."  
  
"Exactly," she agreed. "So go on. Improvise."  
  
He snorted. "One of the things I do best, me."  
  
"Just one?" she asked.  
  
"Well, there's others," he said, with the most interesting sparkle in his eyes. Then, he raised a hand to her face. "Hold still and stop snickering."  
  
"Right," she said. "Just let me know when I'm s'posed to start enjoying myself."  
  
"Silly human," he murmured, and wrapped his other arm around her, pulling her close.  
  
She whimpered. It seemed appropriate. He chuckled again, and then they were both laughing. He hugged her tighter to him and she buried her face in his chest, just letting herself get lost in the smell of him and the feel of him so close. Sounded a bit like he was purring like a cat, and the double thrum of his hearts was a rhythm she could get used to, even if they did pound awfully fast.  
  
He raked a hand through her hair and she practically purred herself. "Just lie still," he whispered, dropping a hand onto her face, again. "Close your eyes."  
  
She did and breathed deeply, trying not to give in to thinking about her silly human fantasies of what a moment like this could be about. In a proper bed, back in the TARDIS, comfortable and safe and nothing between them but the air they breathed... She had such ideas for those ears...  
  
Rose smiled softly into the warm leather. Ok, so it wasn't anybody's lurid, erotic fantasy, but lying in his arms was much easier than running for their lives.  
  


*?*

"That's it," she heard the Doctor say. The aliens were chattering at him, sounding like nothing so much as a pot of boiling soup. Rose blinked up at the ceiling, blearily. What the hell was going on?

Oh, she'd fallen asleep again. There was so much running around all through time and space that she tended to sleep any time they had a quiet moment. She shifted around and closed her eyes again, and missed the Doctor's body reclined on the bed next to her. Have to talk to him about that when they got back to the TARDIS.

Yeah, that would be a fun conversation. She rolled her eyes, even if they weren't open. _"Doctor,"_ she imagined herself trying to say with a straight face, _"I've got this really big bed, and I just wondered, you know, so much room to fill up, would you sleep in it with me?"_ The very best she'd get would be a stern look, although there was also the extremely high probability of a lecture about Time Lords being too fantastic to need to sleep like stupid apes.

Mind, if she'd caught him sleeping in the recliner next to her bed once, she'd caught him there six times. He hadn't left her side once the night after 1987, for example, and she was glad, because she hadn't wanted him to do. She'd wanted to know he was alive and with her after her mistake had killed him. She'd known then, once and for all and irrevocably. The Doctor was the man she loved, and she would follow him for as long as he would let her.

The aliens had stopped boiling at him. The Doctor said, "No, really, told you we're a very boring species. Just the briefest touch, no need to be all messy and noisy about it. 'Sides, she's passed out, that's gotta be worth some kind of points or something. Just let us go and we'll call it pax, all right? I wasn't here and neither were you and we're quits on the matter."

The aliens burbled something else and sounded like they gargled a few fish at him. God, the noises they made weren't half disgusting.

"What?!" the Doctor roared. "Oh, hell no," he added.

There was the sound of a slamming door, and the Doctor stalked back to the bed and prodded her gingerly with a finger. "Awake yet, Sleeping Beauty?"

"Thought Sleeping Beauty got woke with kisses?" she complained.

"When's the last time you saw a Handsome Prince with ears like this?" he muttered, and tugged the sonic screwdriver from his pocket.

 _Just before I went to sleep,_ she thought.

The Doctor turned around and stared at her. She stared back at him, and he shook his head. "So you're awake?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. "Did you hypnotize me or something?"

"Nah," he replied and pinched the bridge of his nose. "No, just told you to close your eyes and you were out like half of San Francisco."

She chuckled, then realized. "So'd they buy it, or do I have to make interesting noises or something?"

He gaped at her. She couldn't resist giggling at the look on his face, somewhere between awed incredulity and sheer, unmitigated disbelief.

"What?" she said. "I dated Jimmy Stone. I can fake anything."

If he were anyone else, she would have believed she really heard him say, "Wouldn't have to," but he was the Doctor and he definitely didn't even think things like that. Besides, his lips didn't move. "So what do the aliens want now?" she asked.

"Don't care what they want," he grumbled. "What they're asking for is me to blow them up." He waved one of their electric sticks at her. He ran the sonic screwdriver over it, and grinned wildly. Then, he darted into the loo.

Fifteen seconds later, he came charging out, grabbed her hand, and threw his leather jacket over her shoulders. "That should protect you, as long as they don't touch you more than ten seconds," he said.

"What'd you do?" she demanded.

He launched into a non-sensical explanation of sonics, plumbing, electrical appliances, and special kinds of soap. "In other words?" she said.

"Boom," he replied, and grinned.

He threw open the door. "Ya might want to run," he told the first alien he saw. "This place's about to go up like a room full of nitro-glycerin." He pointed the sonic screwdriver behind them and, sure enough, the bathroom detonated. It seemed to start a chain reaction and there were several more detonations in rapid succession.

Hand in hand, laughing like maniacs, Rose and the Doctor ran for their lives.

*?*

Rose stood next to the Doctor at the TARDIS console, watching the aliens mill around their laboratory while it burnt. "Now, that's fantastic," she said.

"Yep," he agreed, and turned off the view screen, getting ready to set the coordinates.

"So, any other space cliches you want to show me?" she asked, cheekily.

He stared at her. "Such as?" he asked, after a moment of just looking at her like she was mad.

"Well, you know, there's alien abduction for experiments, we just did that one. There's the 'shag or die' theory, which I think we handled well. There's power mad aliens out to take over the world, we've already done that. There's time travel problems, done those. There's trapped and doomed, we do that quite a lot. Anything else?"

"Dunno," he said shortly. "What did you have in mind?"

"Does that last bit count as telepathy?" she mused, then chewed thoughtfully at her thumbnail.

He chuckled and his ears turned a bit pink, probably at how little she understood about something that made easy sense to him. "Don't be daft, Rose. Only an absolutely mad telepathic alien would peek into a human's mind, even by accident."

She felt like pouting. So humans were too weird for telepaths unless they were nuts, was that what he was saying? Never mind, this was meant to be fun. "Oh well, there's alien booze and/or scents that make you act funny."

"Huh. Well, there's some Shobogan ale in the kitchen, but I use it for cooking, and it hasn't bothered you yet."

She grinned. "So that's right out."

"Yeah, 'fraid so. Anything else you got?"

 _Kept as an alien's love slave_ , she thought, and chewed her lip. "Nah," she said. "I'm gonna go get a shower."

He shook his head at her. "Whatever you're thinking, Rose Tyler..." He grinned. "Go on, get changed. I'll see if I can't find a crazed alien king to rescue you from or something."

She grinned at him and danced off to get her shower.


End file.
